Reflection Essay Example: Difference Between Truth and Fact

The famous writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou once said, “There’s a world of difference between truth and facts”. One of the biggest differences between truth and fact can be seen through the definitions of the two words. The definition of truth, according to Merriam-Webster, states, “A judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true”. The definition of fact, according to Merriam-Webster, states, “A piece of information presented as having objective reality”. The keyword in the definition of truth is “accepted” while the keyword in the definition of a fact is “objective” as in empirical and verifiable. Something that is “accepted” shows a belief while “objective” shows something can be proven or disproven through experimentation and checking both primary and secondary sources. The difference between these two definitions can be seen in a quote by the second president of the United States, John Adams. John Adams once wrote, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes,our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”.

The difference between truths and facts are vast and can be seen through the official definitions of the words and factors such as the relevance of time, the access to knowledge and resources, and the role of biases. History and natural sciences have many good examples where we can see these differences. Time plays a crucial role in the difference between truth and fact. Why? Time tests both truth and facts. Truths can change over time with new information coming up over time or new biases and points of view shift over time. Facts, on the other hand, are more likely to stand the test of time. Because facts have a sense of objectivity, the facts are less likely to change because they keep getting the same results over and over most of the time, even with improved tools. A good example in history to view both facts and truths is the event of the Serbian government’s involvement in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It is a truth because, after the assassination of the Archduke, Austria blamed the Serbian government for inciting a revolution in the Austrian-held territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Serbian government claimed to have no involvement with the radical group Black Hand, furthermore after World War 1, people believed that the Serbians were innocent, especially because it was the Austrians who declared war first. The reason this can be seen as truth is because at the time there was no hard evidence linking the government of Serbia to the Black Hand which, depending on which side you believed, was considered as either an ethnic freedom fighter group or a radical ethnic terrorist organization. That being said, in today's world, this went from being a truth to being an objective fact. Today we have primary sources of written records from  people within the Serbian government who had ties with or were members of the Black Hand, and records showing government officials provided the Black Hand with weapons and intelligence to help them in their mission to kill the Austrian archduke.

A good example of how time is a factor in relation to truths and facts can be found in the field of paleontology, or the study of fossils and ancient forms of life. For the longest time, people believed that dinosaurs had scales or leathery skin much like modern lizards and crocodiles. This idea came from a multitude of factors but the biggest culprits were Hollywood and the scientific community believing that dinosaurs were closely related to modern reptiles.

However, in recent years, we have learned that dinosaurs were not cold-blooded leathery skinned giants related to reptiles, but warm-blooded giants that are more closely related to modern birds, to the point that some species like the Tyrannosaurus rex had feathers. One of the best quotes to summarize the role time plays in truth and facts is by a German philosopher named Arthur Schopenhauer. Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Access to knowledge also plays an important role in the difference between truth and fact. The access to information from different sources allows for facts to be analyzed because you can compare and contrast information and make measurements and find other ways to observe if something is truly a fact. If you do not have access to the same information from multiple sources, bias can seep into the information and it is no longer fact but a truth. A good example of this in history can be seen in any tyrannical dictatorship in world history but is most prominent in Nazi Germany from 1930 to 1945. When the Nazi party took power in Germany, after cementing their power in the government, they began to target academic sources like universities, libraries, books, and other places where information distribution is the main focus.

The Nazis began to burn books that did not concur with their point of view. Furthermore, Nazis silenced professors, scholars, academics, figures of faith, and any other intellectuals that they deemed as a threat. They then published biased history and science books that showed Aryans and the German people as the superior race on Earth and showed minorities such as Jews, Slavs, Blacks, and Romani as inferior races and as problems to humanity. This skewed German people’s knowledge and perspectives, especially the children who grew up during this time. Another example of how access to knowledge is a key factor in determining truth or fact can be seen in the evolution of the historic understanding of our solar system determining what is in the middle of our solar system. The heliocentric model of our solar system was first introduced in 1543 by Nicholas Copernicus and then was later confirmed by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. However, this theory was dismissed by the Catholic Church because it went against their teachings. The Catholic Church then excommunicated Galileo and put him under house arrest. It took several years after Galileo’s death before the Catholic Church changed its teachings to include the heliocentric solar system in their teachings to the general public. Bias is yet another huge factor when determining whether something is truth or fact.

According to the Oxford dictionary, bias is “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair”. Because the truth is another way to say belief, truth is more likely to be contorted by bias. Fact, on the other hand, is less likely to be affected by bias because it is empirically observed. This means that while facts can be biased, they are still verifiable. One example of this in the natural sciences is COVID-19 and its treatments. At the end of 2019, a pandemic known as Coronavirus-19 broke out from Wuhan, China. During Donald Trump’s presidency, the first vaccines were released to the general public, especially for the vulnerable populations, such as the immunocompromised, the elderly, and emergency responders. At that time, anti-Trump people rejected the vaccine and claimed it was dangerous. Then after Trump left office and Joe Biden became president, Biden enacted vaccine mandates. Those people that said they wouldn’t get the vaccine, accepted the vaccine and then started to coerce and shame those who said they didn’t trust the vaccines. Those in power then limited alternative treatments like monoclonal treatments and hydroxychloroquine or tried to discredit its usage. Medical establishments, government agencies, and the mainstream media stopped reporting COVID deaths. Moreover, these groups have not been reporting COVID vaccine deaths or adverse reactions and symptoms.

Looking at the 1619 Project by the New York Times, we see an example of bias as a divisive viewpoint in the history of America. The Project proposed viewing America’s founding to be 1619 when for the first time in continental North America, enslaved Africans were sold to European colonists. This project also states that American capitalism, the American government, and other institutions that are central to the American identity are rooted in racism, anti-blackness, and slavery. This project also discredits ideals and founding people and events that made America what it is today. The authors’ defended their statements that the main reason the American Revolution was fought was so that Southern plantation owners could defend slavery, that the Declaration of Independence stating that “all men were created equal” was a lie, that the US Constitution defended slavery, and that the Founding Fathers supported slavery with some even taking steps to stop the spread of abolitionist ideals. This project shows the blatantly clear bias that favors black people and rewrites history to an Afro Central perspective, while in a way demonizing whites and completely overlooking the struggles of other minorities such as the Hispanics, Irish, Jews, Germans, Italians, Slavic peoples, the Chinese and Japanese, Hawaiians, and the different Native American tribes. A good quote to understand the role of bias is from Kyle Hill. Kyle Hill once stated, “We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at.”

I agree with Maya Angelou’s quote. Facts and truths are different because facts can be measured and are less personal than truths. This difference is considerable, yet people still use them interchangeably. A truth is a truth until it is not and facts remain the same for centuries.